Ghost Announce U.S. Tour Dates

Ghost have announced a 16-date U.S. tour for May, and it seems likely that news regarding the release of their fourth album will arrive before then.

The follow-up to 2015’s Meliora will be the first since Ghost mastermind Tobias Forge’s identity was confirmed as a result of legal action against his former bandmates.

It will also be the first album to feature Forge’s new incarnation of Zero, who'll replace the previous Papa Emeritus, Hints as to the nature of the latest frontman character were offered on the last show of the band’s previous tour, when he appeared and announced, “I am Papa Emeritus Zero. The party is over and now a new era begins. The Middle Ages begin now.”

In a later video clip, he stated, “I’m going to fucking wipe the floor with this guy. Not bad, but not good either. Pure shame.” A new tour poster appears to suggest a complete change of image from the ecclesiastical look he’d used in the past.

Forge recently revealed that track titles on the new album include “Rats” – which also appears on the poster below – “Faith,” “Life Eternal” and “Danse Macabre.” “It is loosely themed around the concept of death and doom," he said. "It's a themed album around medieval times, but it's definitely clinging onto a lot of very current things. … There's a lot that you would recognize today in online mannerisms. In many ways, we've gone back a few steps, because now it's closer to how it was back in the old days when people were standing at the square and all of a sudden, it's like in Monty Python's Life of Brian: ‘Stone him! Ra! Ra! Ra!’ Public trials are very unsupervised and extremely swift and speak to the most primordial parts of us.”